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NEWS
RELEASE
April 29, 2003
Contact: Jim
Warren
919-416-5077
NC Nuclear Plant One of the Most Troubled in Southeast
Emergency Shutdowns, Other Problems Continue at Shearon Harris
DURHAM, NC – A series of emergency reactor shutdowns and
other persistent mechanical problems last year continued a troubling pattern for
the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in southwestern Wake County, and led federal
regulators to inspect the plant at a higher level than any other in the
Southeast. Watchdog organization NC WARN said today that the reactor shutdowns
are far above the industry average, and the combination of problems is a
reminder that attacks aren’t the only risks at nuclear power plants.
The problems were revealed late last month when the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave its Annual Assessment Report for Harris
at a meeting in nearby Apex, NC. While the agency said that, “Overall,
Harris operated in a manner that preserved public health and safety,” it
noted a number of issues, several of them unresolved, that “degraded” the
plant’s margin of safety.
In recent years, Harris has been plagued by emergency
shutdowns due to a variety of human and mechanical problems. In 1999, four
emergency shutdowns – three in the first quarter alone – led to workers being
“very disappointed … soul-searching” and unsure if the problems were
“coincidental or a sign of a deeper problem,” according to The News &
Observer. (One of the four 1999 “SCRAMS” was later re-classified by
plant owners as not an actual “shutdown,” although power was reduced to 3%.)
NRC data indicates that the average nuclear plant experiences emergency
shutdowns once every 18 months.
In addition, in April 2000, a safety monitoring system
designed to provide vital information during an emergency failed for the 15th
time since Shearon Harris began operating in 1987. No published information is
available as to the system’s operation since that time.
NRC records show that in January and July 2002, Harris
staff performed manual reactor shutdowns due to equipment failures in the
cooling system. An automated shutdown then occurred in August when the outside
power grid weakened.
NC WARN Executive Director Jim Warren said today: “Unfortunately,
Progress Energy is far above the industry average in three important areas:
Emergency reactor shutdowns, required inspections, and the fact that it has
interconnected the Harris reactor’s cooling system to four high-level waste
pools – the nation’s largest. Those are not distinctions we feel comfortable
with.”
Documents show that the other problems in 2002 included
nine unresolved items identified during a triennial fire protection inspection
by the NRC, including a “Severity Level III Notice of Violation.” A follow-up
inspection found corrective actions “not acceptable.”
Also, during an inspection, Harris employees found “rubber
and other foreign material” clogging a cooling line in the heat removal system.
The NRC ranked the problem “low to moderate” in terms of safety significance. No
penalties were assessed for any of Harris’s deficiencies.
Also revealed last month: Progress Energy said it has just
replaced a number of evacuation sirens in the four counties within Harris’
10-mile emergency planning zone. In the past, the plant reported that many of
its sirens were inoperable during severe weather.
In addition, due to a near-meltdown of the Davis Besse
reactor in Ohio last year, which occurred after leaking control rod assemblies
caused boric acid to burn a football-sized hole in the reactor vessel head,
Progress Energy is required to perform a Bare Metal Inspection of the Harris
reactor head to at an upcoming refueling outage to determine if leakage of
borated water might be occurring.
It was at the NRC’s meeting that NC WARN openly called for
plant manager Jim Scarola to take the one measure that could immediately lower
risks of a catastrophic fire resulting from an attack: Lower the density of the
racking of spent fuel assemblies in Harris’s cooling pools. Such pools are
considered the largest and most vulnerable targets at nuclear plants.
Warren added, “Scarola dodged the question in front
of the media by saying he wanted ‘to meet and discuss it.’ But now he’s
stalling. We want them to finally explain why shipping even more spent fuel to
Harris – and creating an even larger disaster-in-waiting for the next several
decades – is safer than hardening the storage at each of the corporation’s
plants.” Warren noted that research from Princeton and MIT indicates
that Progress Energy could accomplish the risk reduction measures annually for
less than the raise recently granted its CEO, William Cavanaugh.
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